Additionally to these 24 companies based in the US, are nearly 50
subsidiaries of foreign enterprises whose arms co-operation with Iraq seems to have been operated from the US. In addition, Ministries for
defense, energy, trade, and agriculture, as well as the foremost U.S.
nuclear weapons laboratories at Lawrence Livermore. Los Alamos, and
Sandia, are designated as suppliers for the Iraqi arms programs for A,
B, and C-weapons as well as for rockets.

United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq'. 1992.

“Between January 1985 and August 2, 1990, the executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq, including $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment. I think that is a devastating record.”
-Donald Riegle Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs

June 19, 1925 - The Geneva Protocol officially outlawed chemical warfare. The US did not ratify until 1974.

The United States, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs, botulism, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. - right up until August 2, 1990.

December 1982 - US resumed conventional military sales to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

In 1983, the Reagan administration approved the sale of 60 Hughes helicopters to Iraq in 1983 “for civilian use”. However, as Mark Phythian pointed out, these aircraft could be “weaponised” within hours of delivery. Then US Secretary of State George Schultz and commerce secretary George Baldridge also lobbied for the delivery of Bell helicopters equipped for “crop spraying.” It is believed that US-supplied choppers were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja, which killed 5000 people.

“First on Hussein's shopping list was helicopters -- he bought 60 Hughes helicopters and trainers with little notice. However, a second order of 10 twin-engine Bell "Huey" helicopters, like those used to carry combat troops in Vietnam, prompted congressional opposition in August, 1983... Nonetheless, the sale was approved.” (Los Angeles Times, 13 February 1991)

November 1, 1983 - Senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz that intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were resorting to "almost daily use of Chemical Weapons" against the Iranians.

November 8, 1983 - Iran asked for a United Nations Security Council investigation into Iraq’s use of chemical warfare.
November 10, 1983 - US Department of State released a report disclosing that Iraq “used tear gas and skin irritants against Iran as long ago as July 1982" and used “lethal chemical weapons on the order of Saddam Hussein during battles in the Mandali area.” The report also stated that Iraq, “used a chemical agent with lethal effects against Iranian forces invading Iraq at Haj Umran and more recently against Kurdish insurgents.”

November 26, 1983 - Ronald Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 114
concerning U.S. policy toward the Iraq. The directive calls for heightened regional military cooperation to defend oil facilities. It states, "Because of the real and psychological impact of a curtailment in the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf on the international economic system, we must assure our readiness to deal promptly with actions aimed at disrupting that traffic [of oil]."

December 20, 1983 - Special presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein and delivered a hand-written offer of a normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Although Rumsfeld said during a September 21, 2002 CNN interview, "In that visit, I cautioned him about the use of chemical weapons, as a matter of fact, and discussed a host of other things.” Official transcripts of the meeting prove otherwise. Rumsfeld never even mentioned chemical or biological weapons to Saddam.
(www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq30.pdf)

By the end of 1983, US$402 million in agriculture department loan guarantees for Iraq were approved. In 1984, this increased to $503 million and reached $1.1 billion in 1988. Between 1983 and 1990, CCC loan guarantees freed up more than $5 billion. Some $2 billion in bad loans, plus interest, ended up having to be covered by US taxpayers.

June, 1984 - Vice President Bush telephoned the president of the Export-Import Bank and personally helped persuaded him to approve $500 million in loan guarantees so Iraq can build an oil pipeline. (There was concern that Hussein would not repay loans; Export-Import Bank loan guarantees grew from $35 million in 1985 to $267 million by 1990).

February 1984 - An Iraqi military spokesman acknowledged chemical warfare use by issuing a warning to Iran, "The invaders should know that for every harmful insect, there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it . . . and Iraq possesses this annihilation insecticide."

March 5, 1984 - US State Department stated that “available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons.”

March 23, 1984 - Iran accused Iraq of poisoning 600 of its soldiers with mustard gas and Tabun nerve gas.

March 24, 1984 - Rumsfeld was again in Baghdad to meet with Hussein’s foreign minister Tariq Aziz. On the day of his visit, United Press International reported from the United Nations: “Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded...”

March 29, 1984, New York Times, reporting on the aftermath of Rumsfeld's talks in Baghdad, stated that US officials had pronounced “themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the US and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name.”

March 30, 1984 - New York Times reported that US intelligence officials had “what they believe to be incontrovertible evidence that Iraq has used nerve gas in its war with Iran and has almost finished extensive sites for mass producing the lethal chemical warfare agent.”
In 1984, according to The LA Times, the State Department, in the name of “increased American penetration of the extremely competitive civilian aircraft market”, pushed through the sale of 45 Bell 214ST helicopters to Iraq. The helicopters, worth some $200 million, were originally designed for military purposes. The New York Times later reported that Saddam “transferred many, if not all [of these helicopters] to his military.” (Los Angeles Times, 13 February 1991)

November 26, 1984 - the US and Iraq officially restored diplomatic relations.

April 1985 - US shipped biological/chemical materials to the Iraqi Ministry of Health.

June 1985 - US shipped biological/chemical materials to the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University.

March/April 1986 - US shipped biological/chemical weapons to Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad.

May 2, 1986 - Two batches of bacillus anthracis (the micro-organism that causes anthrax) were shipped from the US to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.

December 15, 1986 - According to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, the CIA began to secretly supply Iraq with intelligence in 1984 that was used to “calibrate” mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. Beginning in early 1985, the CIA provided Iraq with “data from sensitive US satellite reconnaissance photographs to assist Iraqi bombing raids.” (Washington Post, 15 December 1986).

February, 1987 - Vice President Bush telephones the new president of the Export-Import Bank and successfully lobbies for Iraq to receive $200 million in new loan guarantees from the federal agency.

March 2, 1987 - Vice President Bush meets with Iraqi ambassador Nizar Hamdoon and tells him that two requests by Iraq for sensitive dual-use American technology had been approved, despite objections from the Defense Department.

August 31, 1987 - One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped from the US to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries.

Late 1987 - The US State Department reported the Iraqi air force began using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq.

March 16, 1988 - Saddam Hussein orders the gassing of the Kurdish village of Halabjah - at least 5,000 men, women, and children died.

Just four months later, Washington stood by as the US giant Bechtel corporation won the contract to build a huge petrochemical plant that would give the Hussein regime the capacity to generate chemical weapons.

July 11, 1988 - Another shipment of biological/chemical materials went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission.

In 1988, Saddam’s forces attacked Kurdish civilians with poisonous gas from Iraqi helicopters and planes. U.S. intelligence sources told The LA Times in 1991, they “believe that the American-built helicopters were among those dropping the deadly bombs.” In response to the gassing, sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the US Senate (Sept.8) that would have denied Iraq access to most US technology. The measure was killed by the Reagan administration. (Los Angeles Times, 13 February 1991)

August 19/20, 1988 - Official cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War was signed.

September 8, 1988 - The US Senate passed the Prevention of Genocide Act, which would have imposed sanctions on the Hussein regime. Immediately, the Reagan administration announced its opposition to the bill, calling it “premature”and promptly vetoed it. The White House used its influence to stall the bill in the House of Representatives. When Congress did eventually pass the bill, the White House did not implement it.

December 1988 - The US Department of Commerce issued licences to Dow Chemical to sell $1.5 million of dual-use pesticides to Iraq.

October 2, 1989 - US President George Bush senior signed the top-secret National Security Decision 26, which declared: “Normal relations between the US and Iraq would serve our long-term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East. The US should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior and increase our influence with Iraq... We should pursue, and seek to facilitate, opportunities for US firms to participate in the reconstruction of the Iraqi economy.”

November 1989 - US shipped biological materials to the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah.

November 8, 1989 - Bush senior approved $1 billion in loan guarantees for Iraq in 1990 despite concerns by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve about a growing scandal involving Iraq and the Agriculture credits.

From July 18 to August 1, 1990, President Bush's administration approved $4.8 million in advanced technology sales to the Iraqi Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization.

April 19,1990 - White House National Security Council thwarts efforts by Commerce Department to curb the flow of U.S. technology to Iraq.

July 9, 1990 - April Glaspie, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, assures officials in Baghdad that the Bush Administration is still trying to obtain the release of the second $500 million of the $1 billion approved in November.

July 25, 1990 (one week before the Iraqi invaded Kuwait) - U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with Hussein and assured him that President Bush "wanted better and deeper relations."

August 1, 1990 - $695,000 worth of advanced data transmission devices were approved by the US.

August 2, 1990 - Hussein’s troops roll into Kuwait. Then, and only then, did the US Agricultural Department officially suspend loan guarantees to Iraq.

August, 1990 - Donald Rumsfeld, appearing on an ABC news special, made his first public statement denouncing Iraq’s use or possession of chemical weapons.

In 1992, a US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs learned that the US Commerce Department had deleted references to military end-use from information it sent to Congress about 68 export licences, worth more than $1 billion.

A 1995 affidavit by former National Security Agency official Howard Teicher, obtained by the Washington Post, claimed that the U.S. "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required."

January 26, 1998 - Donald Rumsfeld signed on to an “open letter” to President Clinton, calling on him to eliminate “the threat posed by Saddam.” It urged Clinton to “provide the leadership necessary to save ourselves and the world from the scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to relinquish.”

August 17, 2002 - New York Times reported that, according to “senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program”, even though “senior officials of the Reagan administration publicly condemned Iraq's employment of mustard gas, sarin, VX and other poisonous agents …… President Reagan, vice president George Bush and senior national security aides never withdrew their support for the highly classified program in which more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) were secretly providing detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb-damage assessments for Iraq.” (New York Times, 17 August 2002).

Above information is available through the ‘National Security Archives’ at George Washington University (www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index.htm). Extensive notes and complete online versions of every official US document used or cited above are available through the website’s National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82. Edited by Joyce Battle, February 25, 2003. All official US documents were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and published in1995.